


In the Upstairs Window

by edy



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cotard's Syndrome, Depression, Existential Crisis, Guilt, Hallucinations, M/M, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 12:01:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8013013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edy/pseuds/edy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't go in the warehouse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Upstairs Window

**Author's Note:**

> inspiration: "fairly local" by twenty one pilots and "blasphemy" by tyler joseph
> 
> translation into русский available: [In the Upstairs Window](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5347161) by [Авер](https://ficbook.net/authors/329431)
> 
> -
> 
> i'd like to thank [mars](http://archiveofourown.org/users/marsakat/pseuds/marsakat) for some eye-opening advice, and [mason](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollarize/pseuds/Pollarize) for being an all-around amazing guy who knows exactly what to say to get me out of a rut. this fic wouldn't be possible without them both. 
> 
> thank you so much.

And his van rolls to a stop in front of the warehouse. She's in his ear already, telling him to stop, stop, move along, I thought I told you—

"Okay," he says. "Okay, I'm not there."

She doesn't believe him. She doesn't believe him. She can hear him rolling down the window. I thought I told you—

"Yes, fine. Yeah." His hand grips the window sill as he leans over the side of his van, blood rushing to his head, to his nose. He can taste it.

"Go home right now," she's whispering, her mouth to the phone receiver. "Please." Words are unsaid. Words are forgotten. I thought I told you, I thought I told you—

"I'm driving home," he says, voice low, mimicking hers. "You're distracting me." The van shakes. He returns to his seat, dizzy, a head rush, a head rush, blood—he can taste blood. Napkins in his glove department, he pulls out one after the other and holds it to his nose. There's so much blood. "You're distracting me."

"Go home right now," she repeats. Stern, like his mother, his stomach is sick.

"I'm home." The warehouse is empty. A light flickers on upstairs. "I'm going home. You're distracting me."

"I thought I told you—" she's saying, but he hangs up and throws his phone to the floor of his car. It slides under a seat.

Blood stops. He stops. "I thought I told you, I thought I told you," he whispers, and pounds the van door, beating and beating it until the window is rolled up. Cold gone, warm returning, he presses another napkin to his nose and blows. It hurts. It hurts.

The light in the warehouse blinks twice. He watches. His phone rings and rings. It hurts. He picks up. "Yeah?"

"Go home, Tyler," she says, and she says, "Please, go home; I thought I told you—"

His phone shatters against the dashboard. Used napkins flutter to his feet.

And his van rolls away from the warehouse.

*

He checks his van when he pulls into the driveway. Underneath the snow that has caked its way onto the tires, he sees fur, hair, and proceeds to struggle to keep the contents inside his stomach. The fur is white, the hair brown, and he wonders what else might have been in the trash bag as he plucks away the remnants in his tires, too. Nothing alive, he hopes, maybe some old fur from a cat brush, or maybe some discarded hair from a shower drain. "Please," he sighs, and watches the snow flutter from the dark sky, "nothing alive."

Tomorrow is a new day. He'll salvage what he ran over tomorrow.

But today is here, and today is here.

His mom is still up; the kitchen light is on and shining through the window. Curtains pushed back, he watches her run dishes over a stream of hot water. In his hand, his phone buzzes. Cracked glass kisses his cheek. "Yeah?"

"You're home," she's saying. "I see you across the street."

So, he waves. Her blinds quickly shut. "You need to sleep, Tyler. We open early. You almost didn't wake up after your break."

"Jenna," Tyler says, his boots crunching the snow on his way to his house, across from hers, next to his parents', "shut up."

She shuts up. He listens to her breathe, listens to his keys jingle-jangling into the lock. He continues to listen, even begins to hum, to lighten the mood. Sighing comes over the line, and he laughs, and she isn't pleased. "I thought I told you—"

And he ends the call. Coat ditched, toboggan cap on an armchair, Tyler travels to the basement in just a pair of boxers and his t-shirt. With a throw blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he orders an iPhone repair kit off Amazon and has it ship overnight. From his desk, lying face up, broken and broken, Jenna's text alights the whole room. He's blind. He's blind.

 _Stay away from the warehouse, Tyler_.

*

He doesn't listen.

Of course he doesn't listen.

*

For weeks, for months, Tyler drives past the warehouse on the side of the road to and from his way to work. It's there, on a back road behind a busy street, hidden to all, but seen by everyone. Teenagers used to hang out there on Halloween, drinking beer and smoking pot, and young adults would do the same with better beer and better pot. It was abandoned years ago and only recently gotten back into the spotlight after a couple of kids dared each other to see what was inside.

They were on the local news station, all wide-eyed and no color in their faces. "W-we thought it'd be funny," one said, while the other stammered and refused to break contact with the camera. "My friend told us we wouldn't be able to get inside, but we broke a window, and we—we—we—"

"What did you find?" the interviewer asked, her smile attentive and her posture slouched to get on the same level as the children.

"A dead body."

Police flooded the place. Tyler remembers standing on the street, one of the crowd, when the police barged into the warehouse and declared it vacant. "Nothing," Tyler heard them say. "We found nothing. Not even glass from the supposed broken window."

"Oh, that warehouse has been empty for years," Jenna said once Tyler returned with their lunch. She munched on potato chips and sucked grease off her unpainted fingernails. "Think it might have been storage for a music store? Don't really know, to be honest. It's been so long, even before you moved here, Tyler."

"So, older than you?" Tyler teased, and Jenna gave a playful scowl and laughed, "Haha, funny, Ty."

Tyler's been drawn to the place ever since he stepped foot into the city. The first time he saw the looming building with the dust for windows and cobwebs for roofing, he nearly wrecked, having to swerve off the road to avoid crashing into a young mom with her toddler in the back. His chest hurt, he forgot how to breathe, but he still reversed his car until he was in front of the warehouse. Nothing was there, but Tyler could feel that nothing as if it mutated his bones.

When he came back the following day, nothing happened again, and the day after that, nothing happened for a third time. He smiled, and as he drove home, the lights in the upstairs window flickered on, stayed for three seconds, and then disappeared. There were no shadows.

It was his birthday when the lights said hello. Jenna gifted him a journal and told him to write down some of those interesting thoughts of his. A wink followed this, and he squirmed on the stool and shoved the moleskine notebook into the deepest part of his bag. On his way home, his mother talking on the phone, Tyler saw the lights in the warehouse flash on and go off. He did wreck then, sending the front end of his car into a guard rail and almost killing himself. It was cold when he gathered his bearings, and his mother screamed for him. He can't forget that scream.

He sat in bed that night, sore and bandaged, and wrote his first entry in his journal. _i think you saw me, but i didn't see you. you said "hello," and i almost gave my life for you._

It was a mistake to tell Jenna he totaled his car. "What are you going to drive?" she asked, like it was the end of the world, and he shrugged and mumbled, "I have money saved."

His mom moved into the house next to him. She said it was a coincidence. "Your father and I were going to move _ages ago_ , Tyler. Don't worry. Oh, here's some money for a new car."

With Jenna, Tyler picked out a van. It was used and had a few holes in the seats, but it had space in the back, and they needed that space. "It'll be perfect," Jenna said, bouncing on her heels. "We can start doing deliveries!"

Tyler moved here under Jenna's suggestion. They met on Instagram, being mutual followers who commented and frequently liked each other's posts of their art—art being cakes, cupcakes, pastries, all kinds of sweets. _Come move here with me_ , Jenna sent him, _and we can totally start a bakery._ He tried to tell her he wasn't that great at baking the food, just decorating, but she wouldn't have that, and the next thing Tyler knew, Jenna bought him a one-way plane ticket from California to Ohio. He couldn't say no. She was so nice to him. "It'll be like… coming home," she told him on the phone, as he waited to board the plane. "I can't wait to see you in person."

He kissed her cheek when he saw her. It made sense. She smiled.

Jenna took him around the city, and Tyler reminisced about the sights and pointed out the parks and houses and shopping centers and street corners he and his old friends would loiter. "There," he said, and gestured toward the warehouse. He paused. "No, not there. That wasn't there when I was a kid." He drove past the building the night he moved here, but it was different to experience it in daylight.

"No," Jenna said. "But don't go in there."

"Why?"

Jenna hooked their arms together. "Dunno. That's what everybody says: Don't go in the warehouse."

*

Tyler hears it from everybody. He asks the customers after making sure Jenna is out of earshot, and most of them tell him, "Just don't go in the warehouse," while a few odd people here and there have no idea what he's talking about when he mentions a warehouse. "You know," he says, "the one off the main road, looks abandoned, scary, like monsters could live inside."

"Oh, that one," they say, but they grab their order and leave with nonplussed expressions.

He really gets the gossip during his deliveries, though. Always at five in the afternoon, Tyler packs up the day's call-ins into his van and drops them off on front porches. He always knocks beforehand; no one used to answer him, but now he's an extension of their households. The elderly tend to be the ones who Tyler visits most often, though he doesn't mind that. He likes hearing about their days and even disclosing some information about his own. At the beginning, he never gave away too much. He's comfortable now and feels no shame in telling a little old lady he wished he didn't wake up today. She pouts, and he pouts back, and she rubs his arm and says she's going to knit him a sweater, and _she totally does_. It's big and black and warm and has a _T_ on the front in white. He wears it whenever he can, which is often. After the kids claimed they broke into the warehouse, it grew colder—bitter, harsh, and it made Tyler's nose dry and bleed far too much. He's taken to keeping napkins from the bakery stored in his glove department. He never knows when he might need them.

It's always the elderly and teenagers who add fuel to Tyler's fire. They explain their understanding of things, about how they think something terrible happened in the warehouse, and it wants out _badly_.

"How badly?" Tyler asks, chewing on a muffin.

A girl with a ring through her nose leans in, blueberries on her breath, and whispers, "So fucking badly. It wants revenge."

"On who? Who wants revenge?"

"The dead body," her friend says, chomping into a chocolate muffin. "The _ghost_."

"No such thing as ghosts," Tyler protests weakly. "The police said there wasn't a dead body. Not even a broken window."

"That's what this ghost wants you to think." The guy points, and Tyler points at him, too, and says, "Whatever."

With age comes rationality. "Maybe the warehouse wants visitors," a man with white hair and glasses muses. "Maybe it wants friends."

His wife lightly smacks his leg. "It eats whoever goes in there! Don't you remember what happened to the little girls last year?"

"Who?"

" _Exactly_." She goes back to watching _Wheel of Fortune_ , and Tyler narrows his eyes and steps backwards out of the house.

He can't ask Jenna because Jenna shoots him down every time. "Tyler, no. Don't go in the warehouse. It doesn't matter. _It doesn't matter._ I told you not to go in there. It's not that I think something's going to happen because maybe nothing will happen. Everybody says to not go in there, and there must be a reason to that. So, don't go. Please, Tyler. It could be dangerous."

"Because of ghosts?"

She rolls her eyes. "No, because of the weak foundation and broken staircases, and who knows the debris that's collected in there. The roof could fall in."

But every morning and every night, Tyler drives by the warehouse and watches the lights in the upstairs window go on and off, on and off. Tyler smiles and swears he feels something smile with him.

*

Jenna carpools to work with him. She sits in the passenger seat of his van and runs her fingers along the spider web cracks on his phone. "Dropped it, you said?"

"Yeah," he murmurs, avoiding her eye, "when you called me."

"So, that's why you hung up on me."

"Yeah," he repeats, "that's why."

Tyler's van rolls to a stop in front of the warehouse. Jenna stomps her feet, and the van shakes. " _Tyler_."

"I ran something over," he explains, "around here, I think. There was hair in my tires. Trash bags."

Jenna volunteers to venture outside. Her skin is pale and instantly rushes to a pink tone at the cold air's bite. She rubs her arms and pulls her jacket closer to her body, crouching near each of Tyler's tires. Head tilting to the left, to the right, her nose scrunches, and she delicately brushes away snow. She is out of Tyler's line of sight now. He tries to move his side mirror, tries to see Jenna, but she's standing and covering her mouth and going further down the road, snow concealing the road, the yellow lines, the white lines, and she walks and crouches once more. "Find it?" Tyler calls, and Jenna nods and pokes at the trash bag his tires ripped into last night.

"Just garbage," she says, but her voice is shaky, and Tyler pushes down on the gas, inching forward. Jenna shouldn't have to walk.

"You sure?"

Jenna is by his window, shivering in her coat. "Sure. Just garbage. Didn't want to pick through it. Unsanitary."

"No animals? Nothing alive?"

"Nothing alive."

He smiles, and she does, too. They continue their ride to the bakery, the warehouse almost deceiving in the daylight.

*

She was right about the roof falling in. It was an off-the-tongue remark, something that shouldn't be taken seriously. Yes, the warehouse looks like it hasn't seen proper maintenance in years, but Tyler didn't actually think the roof would crack and fall and fall and _fall._

They're driving home, dark outside, windows up, and heat turned to the max. When they pass the warehouse, the lights in the upstairs window blink, and Tyler is pulling over, watching it, and Jenna is frowning and smacking his arm and telling him to drive, Tyler, drive. "It's cold," she says, continuing to beat him with the end of her scarf. "Go _home_."

But soon she's quiet and watching with Tyler. Almost like a whisper, the lights shut off, and then—a scream. The scream is powerful and forces them to cover their ears. Brick by brick, the warehouse crumbles, the roof loose and pounding through multiple floors, destroying and ruining the already state of ruins. There's dust and ash, and Jenna hits Tyler's arm again, telling him to go, go, go, please, now, and Tyler is driving and racing away and thankful he hadn't rolled down the window to peer outside tonight.

Jenna refuses to sleep by herself. She doesn't leave Tyler's side. They sit in the basement, curled on the futon in the corner with blankets piled on top of them. Layers, Tyler is warm and replacing the broken screen on his phone. Jenna urged him to get inside, but he had to pause to grab the box from the front porch. "Move it," Jenna said, and Tyler scowled. Jenna won't leave him be. She's keeping a close eye on him, as if she's waiting for him to do something, say something. What could he do? What could he say?

"Tyler, do you like me?"

"Yeah."

Nothing else after that. When his phone is repaired, they relocate to Tyler's bedroom. Jenna is the big spoon. Tyler has never felt more alone.

*

The warehouse is still standing. All is well. Jenna voices her confusion from the passenger seat of Tyler's van. "We definitely saw the roof cave in yesterday, right? Didn't we, Tyler?"

"Yeah." Tyler frowns. "Maybe it wasn't real."

Jenna rolls her eyes. "So, we saw it fall down because we expected it to happen?"

Tyler shrugs. "Maybe."

She tries worming details from their customers, but they're just as confused as her. "It was really loud," she says, eyes wide, and she gets snorts and shakes of heads in return.

"No idea what you're talking about, miss. A dozen donuts, please. Assorted."

Despite Jenna getting a ride from Tyler again that evening, she doesn't spend the night. "Take care," she says, and kisses Tyler's cheek. "I'll see you on Monday, Ty."

Tyler sits on his bed, writes in his journal, and listens to the news. By the end of the hour, Tyler comes to the conclusion he and Jenna must have shared a hallucination. He doesn't think it's possible, but what else could have happened?

_what else could have happened?_

*

The bakery isn't open on Sundays. Under the guise of religious reasons, Tyler truly does not like Sundays. On Sundays, he stays in bed and doesn't move. On Sundays, his mind is the most active and the most unforgiving. Starting at the stroke of midnight and ending at another, Tyler believes he is conditioned to associate Sundays with bad thoughts and the desire to die.

Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, Tyler wiggles from his bed and pulls on layer after layer. Movements silent, actions a secret, Tyler imagines his life is being projected onto a large screen for everyone to see. The smallest noises make him jump, no matter if he is the one to make them—stairs creaking, a piece of paper blowing over, doors opening and closing. He expects Jenna to pop from a cabinet and scold him. "Go to bed," she would say, wagging her finger in his face. "I thought I told you, I thought I told you—"

Tyler grabs the keys to his van and leaves. Next door, the porch light is off and the curtains are drawn. His parents are asleep. Across the street is much the same, as is the rest of the street. They are sleeping. The world is sleeping. Tyler climbs into his van, starts it, and listens to the low rumble the entire way to the warehouse. Though his mind is plagued with thoughts as dark as the night around him, Tyler does not tune it out; he does not flip on the radio, he does not stop thinking these bad thoughts, and he does not scream when he runs something over for the second time in three days.

It's over before it starts. A flash, like lightning, and Tyler bounces in his seat and feels the rest of the vehicle bounce and bounce as he runs the thing over with all four tires. He should be thinking rationally, should be screaming until his mother comes to his rescue, but he's calm, his hands still on the steering wheel, not even perspiring under his layers. Three days ago, he had run over a trash bag in front of this very warehouse, but he didn't run over a trash bag tonight. He saw what he ran over, and now he's contemplating if there is something truly wrong with him. Why isn't he crying? Why is he still driving? He's away, far away, continuing down this long stretch of a back road until the warehouse and the one lit upstairs window is far from his wandering eyes. Tyler is in shock. People react differently under increasing levels of stress. His response just so happens to be _flee_ , to tell him to escape, to involve himself in a hit and run.

But it wasn't a hit and run, not really—not when the thing he ran over was already dead.

But she wasn't dead.

Tyler saw her standing there, brown eyes wide and nose broken and bleeding. He saw her hands come up to shield those doe eyes, protect herself—try to protect herself. She wore a ripped blue dress, torn at the end like she had been grabbed and tried to run away. Tyler is running away. He's stopping his van and putting his van in reverse, traveling back down the long stretch of a back road until the warehouse and the one lit upstairs window is near his wandering eyes. There is no blinking, there is no "hello", there is only Tyler running over the girl's body again, breaking any bones that hadn't broken upon the initial impact. He vaguely remembers seeing her lower jaw missing as she held her hands in a mock form of surrender.

Headlights on, van humming, Tyler steps out, walks forward, one heavy boot after the other. In a puddle of blood still forming, she lies on the cold ground, snow in her hair, on her skin. Limbs twisted, chest concaved, and bowels spread across the asphalt like jam on toast, she is both dead and alive. An eye is missing, her lower jaw, too, and she's staring at Tyler, tongue working, producing raspberries, slobbers, no sense of language. Fingertips twitching, muscles weak, the arm she attempts at raising is shaking, shaking so badly. She wants to hold Tyler's hand.

"Die," Tyler tells her. "Please."

And so, she dies.

And then, Tyler calls emergency services. He avoids looking at her body, avoids thinking. He stands over her, his phone to his ear, listening to nothing, listening to the man talking to him, calming him down. Tyler is calm. Tyler's eyes are burning with hot tears, and his nose is bleeding from the cold.

"Sir, try to keep calm. I need to know your location."

"The warehouse," Tyler says. "I'm parked outside the warehouse."

When the paramedics arrive, Tyler is lying next to the girl on the bloodstained asphalt, holding her hand, frozen, made of porcelain. Cheek scraped, lips bitten to shreds, Tyler dons blood from the girl and from his own body. With his nose continuing to freely bleed, the paramedics deal with him first, trying to stop the flow while a lone, brave soul inspects the dead body.

"Man," Tyler hears her sigh, "this doesn't look like she died peacefully at all."

"Did you see in what direction she came?" asks the man pinching Tyler's nose closed. His eyes are dark; Tyler can't see his pupils.

"There," Tyler says, nasally, and shrugs a shoulder at the direction of the warehouse.

A light continues to shine in the upstairs window. The paramedic by the body goes toward the building, flashlight flicking on, her voice carrying. "I'll be back."

"Don't go in there," the man says, slowly removing his fingers from Tyler's nose. "Don't you know what they say?"

"Oh, yeah," she retorts. "I'll be back."

Tyler doesn't think she's going to return, but she does. As soon as she entered, the light shut off. Tyler saw a shadow of an arm. He tells himself it was his imagination.

"Do you need a ride?" she asks him once she's out of the warehouse, unscathed and coming up empty handed. She wondered why the door was unlocked. She wondered who owns the warehouse. She wondered why they're not supposed to go into the warehouse.

"No," Tyler says. "I'll be okay."

"You can't drive. Call someone. We can stay until they arrive."

Tyler calls his mom. Even with all the blood, she hugs him and doesn't let go.

By morning, Tyler is clean, Tyler is eating breakfast with his parents, Jenna is watching the girl's family talk on the news, and the blood on the road is buried underneath three inches of snow.

*

"I thought I told you," Jenna starts, tying on her apron.

"Yes," Tyler says, and pulls on his own apron, dyed with blue icing and glazed frosting. "Thanks for letting me sleep in."

"Had to, didn't I?" Jenna ties her hair up next and watches Tyler. "I'm so sorry, Tyler."

"It's okay," he says, but doesn't mean it. He goes in the back and slides on oven mitts.

*

At five o'clock sharp, Tyler loads up the back of his van with donuts, bagels, muffins, cookies, and a chocolate cake. They're kept warm in special-made insulated bags, their bakery name stamped on the side. It cost more money than their budget allowed, but they made do. It worked out in the end.

Jenna is with him, setting down packages and giving him more side-eye glances than would be considered a comfortable amount. He ignores her, tries to ignore her. "Jenna—"

"Be careful," she says, tugging down the sides of his beanie so his ears are completely covered. She pats them lightly right after. "Text me if something happens."

Tyler slowly nods and climbs into his van. "See ya."

"See ya."

He drops off the cake first, to a middle-aged woman and her girlfriend. They invite Tyler in and share their cake, saying how he looks ill and how chocolate can solve anything. He leaves their cozy house with a smile on his face and feeling better than he has in years.

Normally he doesn't intrude on personal space. He pops into the homes and makes sure payment is in his pocket before departing. The exchange is quick, and depending on how many calls they get that day, he's done in an hour, maybe two. But on a good day—and he certainly classifies these as good days—every household he hits invites him in, brews coffee, tells him to stay a while. They like Tyler, and Tyler likes them. Plus it's always nice to feel welcome and eat some of the sweets he baked. "You made these yourself?" a guy asks, red frosting and sugar cookie crumbs on his lips.

Tyler's heart swoops at the sight. "Yeah."

Jenna's constant encouragement raised his confidence to dangerous levels. Before meeting her, his cooking skills were mediocre, and now, he's reached stepping stones he never thought possible. Denying Jenna's made him into a better person would be a bold-faced lie. He has to thank her—for pushing him out of his comfort zone, for being there for him, and for making it possible for cute guys to compliment his pastries.

A couple with not enough wrinkles but more than enough years sits Tyler on the sofa and fixes him tea while they munch on bagels. Their television is turned to the news, currently predicting more snow and even more snow for the days to come. "Damn outrage," the wife says, stepping out of the way when her husband walks past to give Tyler a mug. "When will it stop snowing? Is this normal?"

"It's winter, dear," her husband quirks, taking the seat next to Tyler and winking. "Snow is common in winter."

"Not like this." Bits of bagel drop from her mouth and land in carpet, forgotten from how small they are. "Think they're going to—oh, yes! Here's what I was telling you about earlier." She grabs the remote and turns up the volume. "Have you heard about this?" she directs to Tyler.

Tyler shrugs because he has no idea what she's referencing. He sips his tea.

A report comes on, on nothing other than the girl Tyler had run over just yesterday. He pales and shoves his bagel into his mouth to seem nonchalant. Neither the wife nor the husband notices.

"We can confirm to you tonight that the young girl paramedics found last night by the abandoned warehouse is indeed one of the two girls who went missing last year, in November. Police have not revealed to what extent her injuries were, but they can say she was pronounced dead at the scene. Autopsy reports have clarified she was living in awful conditions, with little to no nutrients. We don't know, at this time, if the second girl who vanished is in the area, or even still alive. Police say they don't see any connection to the warehouse and the recently deceased girl, and say it was merely a coincidence she was found in that location. Our sources this morning told us the man who found—rather discovered, really—the girl said he saw her coming from the direction of the warehouse before she was ultimately killed. The police have not disclosed who this man is, only saying they do not want to disturb him in this trying time."

"He killed her," the wife says, more bagel bits falling to the carpet.

"On purpose?" Her husband's eyebrows go to his hairline. "Surely it was an accident. It was late at night."

"Obviously it was an accident." She rolls her eyes. "Probably jumped out. Hit and run. Why do you think they're saying they don't want to disturb the poor man? Probably traumatized. Wouldn't you be? Girl jumps out, looking the way she did. Wouldn't be surprised if the man ran her over to kill her."

"So, it was malicious," her husband says.

She rolls her eyes again and finishes her bagel. "I heard she didn't look too good to begin with, you know? Read somewhere on Facebook that she was missing body parts. All I'm saying is if that girl showed up in front of my car, I wouldn't pull over to help her."

"Do you think the warehouse has something to do with it?" Tyler pipes quietly, his mug of tea too hot and uncomfortable for him to handle.

"Obviously," she repeats. "Haven't you heard about the warehouse? Not supposed to go in it. Now, _why_? That's a good question. Always some kind of mystery surrounding that place. Been like that for years. I think the owner's dead, and the city doesn't want to deal with it, so it's standing until it falls. Also read on Facebook the thing's already fallen half a dozen times, but every morning, it's back to standing." She waggles a finger. "Why's that, do you think? There's something in that warehouse. Those kids that broke in, they said it was a dead body, but the police found no trace of any dead bodies. Know what I think? The police never went in to investigate. Even they know you're not supposed to go in the warehouse."

"Honey, stop, you're scaring the boy."

Tyler shakes his head. "I'm okay." He tries to swallow another gulp of tea. "Would you ever go in the warehouse?"

"No," the husband says automatically, and so does the wife.

"What was the warehouse?" Tyler asks next. "My friend said she thought it was storage for a music store."

The husband answers this with a hum and a nod. "Oh, yeah—Guitar Center, I think."

Tyler leaves with an upset stomach. Before climbing back into his van, he begins to wonder why there was no damage done to the vehicle. He doesn't dwell on it and counts his blessings.

*

Later that night, at the stroke of midnight, Tyler dresses in layers and drives to the warehouse. He doesn't make it. Someone is following him in their car, their bright lights turning on and off. When he doesn't pull over or acknowledge them, they blow their horn. It doesn't stop. Tyler pulls over, then, and the person gets out of their car. They're covered in a light dusting of snow, dressed in layers, too, shivering despite it all. Tyler doesn't want to roll down his window, so he cracks it and peers over the edge. Bright lights still on the car behind him, Tyler sees the person's face long before they make it to his van. "Jenna," he says, and debates on speeding away. "What do you want?"

"I thought I told you—"

"Get in," he says, unlocking the passenger side door. "I want to see something."

"No," she says, but she's getting into the van anyway. They're almost there. It's dark and late, and the snow is heavy and wet. "What did you want to see, Tyler?"

He doesn't reply. Arms over her chest, pouting, Jenna sits and keeps to herself the rest of the drive there. Underneath her tough and stubborn exterior, she's scared and excited, and she's the one to pull Tyler from his van and toward the warehouse. "This is what you wanted, right? You wanted to go inside." She's so brave. She's smiling. She's holding Tyler's hand and guiding him toward the front door, nudging open the front door with her shoulder. "They should have locked it," she says. "Why isn't it locked? The kids had to break a window to get inside."

"Jenna," Tyler says.

The warehouse is too dark to see anything. Jenna lets go of Tyler's hand to draw out her phone, the flashlight, and Tyler's backing out, wants to go back outside, backing away and away and away. "Jenna," he says, but she ignores him. She finds her phone and taps onto the flashlight, her glove in her teeth as her phone requires human body heat to function. "Jenna," he says, "please."

"Don't you want this?" She smiles, bright light, bright teeth, and shines the flashlight in Tyler's eyes. He shuts them, puts his hands over them, and she laughs, and someone says, "Tyler," and it isn't Jenna. Jenna's voice isn't deep. Jenna's voice is sweet, angelic, soft, and the voice in his ear is chaotic and demanding, and Jenna is screaming, and Tyler is screaming with her. "Tyler!" she shouts then, and he opens his eyes and comes face to face with another broken girl. This time, her jaw is intact, but she's missing her eyes, her nose, her left arm. She whispers Tyler's name and screeches it, her hand like actual claws as it grabs at Tyler's clothing, ripping it, tearing it. Tyler twists and thrashes. He listens to the fabric of his coat cry, listens to Jenna cry, listens to himself cry.

"Die," Tyler tells her. "Please."

And so, she dies.

She crumples to the floor of the main room of the warehouse. A bloody heap, Tyler notices her skull is bashed in, torn open and leaking onto the concrete floor. And Tyler notices his hands are bloody, fingers curled into fists, and Tyler notices how the lights of the warehouse are on, all on, not just the window upstairs. Tyler is staring at the dead girl, crying, sobbing. Jenna is on him, taking him by the shoulders and drawing him out. She had been outside, had run out when they started screaming. "Tyler?" she called once she was out in the snow. "Tyler, where are you?" Tyler was in the warehouse, beating in the soft brains of the second now-found girl with fists and tears in his eyes.

The lights turn off as soon as they leave. They sprint to Tyler's van and drive to the nearest payphone. Jenna calls while Tyler pulls napkin after napkin from his glove department. He scrubs at the blood until he can't tell if the blood on his hands is gone or if his skin is rubbed raw.

"I heard some screaming," Jenna tells emergency services. "I think it might have been coming from the warehouse."

They go back to Jenna's car, and she follows him home. She doesn't need to be let in; Tyler willingly steps aside and makes room for her in his bed. She's the big spoon again. "You're okay," she says. "Please go to sleep, and everything will be okay come morning."

By morning, Tyler refuses to wash the dry blood from his hands, Jenna fights to shove pancakes in his mouth, the reporter on the television talks of the second girl's appearance, and the warehouse's doors lock.

*

The couple orders bagels again today. Tyler drops them off, and is whisked back into sitting on the sofa with a mug of tea in hand.

"Another girl," the wife is saying, as she drops bagel crumbs over the carpet. "They say her body was found in the road by the warehouse, but I think it was moved."

"Moved by who, dear?" her husband asks, next to Tyler.

"Not 'who'," she chimes. " _What_."

Tyler vomits in their bushes. They don't hear. He drives home.

*

Nothing changes about the warehouse. No lights blink at Tyler, and he doesn't see any shadows.

_i think i killed you. i'm sorry._

*

"It was a rabbit," Jenna mumbles, pressed to Tyler's side, as they watch movies in his living room.

"Hm?" He's already asleep, not coherent, but enough. It's enough.

"What you ran over that first time—it was a rabbit. I lied when I told you it wasn't anything alive."

"Dead rabbit. Someone threw it away."

"Sure," Jenna says, rubbing Tyler's stomach. "It was a dead rabbit that someone threw away."

*

Late Saturday night, Jenna texts him, _Stay away from the warehouse, Tyler_. He doesn't reply, doesn't even read it. It passes along his screen as a notification. His eyes are open, staring, but not staring. Everything hurts.

The bakery is closed tomorrow. Tomorrow is Sunday. Tyler is on autopilot. He rolls from his bed and tugs on layers. His usual winter coat is ruined by talons he does not wish to remember. In the back of his closet, he finds a white coat, too heavy when he purchased it. It's cold tonight, so cold, and Tyler decides to wear it. Stiff, smells, Tyler is surprisingly comfortable.

If there is ever a time where he hopes all the sneaking skills he developed as a teenager pays off, it would be now. The street is quiet—a quiet that should be unbearable, but it _isn't_. On the drive to the warehouse, Tyler realizes he doesn't want to die.

This revelation comes at an odd moment, considering where Tyler is currently driving toward. Is the case solved, then? Was it always those two girls who haunted the warehouse? No, that'd be too simple; it doesn't make sense. The kids who broke in said they found a dead body, and Jenna said the warehouse has been creepy long before Tyler moved here. The girls were missing for a year. There's something else in the warehouse, and that something else is turning on the light in the upstairs window.

Tyler's van is parked out front, still running, providing him with as much warmth as he could possibly need. Tonight, he can see movement in the upstairs window. More than a shadow, more than an arm, there is a person in the upstairs window, hands pressed to the glass. Tyler sees white, black, red, red, _red_ , and as vividly as if it were happening in front of him, Tyler imagines the person jumping out the window and killing themself.

There's nothing. The light disappears. Tyler feels a smile.

He pulls his backpack from the passenger seat, full with nonsense: a blanket; a portable phone charger; a flashlight; a knife that isn't as sharp as Tyler remembered it being when he put it in here; and a small pouch from the bakery, stuffed with chocolate chip cookies. He doesn't anticipate whoever—or whatever—is in there to eat, but it's a nice gesture. It's the thought that counts.

Flashlight in toll, Tyler walks to the warehouse, the snow up to his ankles. The city can't shovel the snow fast enough. Schools have been closed for weeks now, and teachers are resorting to giving their homework online—a feat that is unfair to the children without Internet access. Thankfully Tyler's neighborhood is one whose power hasn't gone out, but it will now. That's the way the world works.

The snow takes a break. As soon as he's by the front doors, it begins. It's freezing and harsh, and Tyler thinks it might turn to hail soon. He shakes the front doors, locked, frowning, why are they locked, why are they locked, I thought I told you, I thought I told you—

Tyler does the next best thing; he breaks a window with the handle of the flashlight and eases his way inside. If history does truly repeat itself, the broken window will be gone by the time the police arrive—if they arrive. Would someone report Tyler? _I saw a man break into the warehouse_. Would anyone care? Or would they think the flashlight beam shining through the windows is another figment of the warehouse? If the roles were reversed, Tyler would go with the latter.

The main room looks like a reception area, somewhere where cushioned chairs and potted plants would make their home. No furniture lingers, not even a hint of it from the dents in the floor. The floor is dusty, dirty, and not one ounce of blood has stained. Did the police clean it up? No. Tyler watches snow flutter down from a hole in the roof, no doubt coming from a hole in the roof on the second floor, the third floor. The snow kissed the stain goodbye. Tyler waves around his flashlight and continues his trek through the warehouse, picking up his feet away from debris from broken structures—shelves, bookcases, wood everywhere. Tyler thinks the inside resembles some kind of post-apocalyptic video game. The walls are knocked out, boards still managing to stand by willpower alone. To the right off the main room, a staircase sits proud. Tyler climbs it.

Nothing is making a sound. Tyler is being watched. "I didn't kill you," he says. "I thought I killed you." He moves his flashlight beam down a narrow hallway. It reflects off an old set of drums, probably left there after the building was abandoned. Tyler's dabbled on the drums before, but wouldn't call himself an expert. Strings and keys, those are his specialties. It has been too long since his hands have known the touch of an instrument.

It smells like death in here.

"I thought I killed you," Tyler says, and goes down the hallway, toward the drums. A lone light bulb in the middle of the hallway flickers on, and he stops walking for a second, and then he's walking, flashlight still on, still walking, still going toward the drums.

That's when he finds the body.

Snow everywhere, coming down a hole in the ceiling in gentle motion, several inches deep, the body hides inside. Only an arm is visible, the hand outstretched and the palm turned upwards. Silently, the snow lands on the palm. The fingers twitch, but Tyler doesn't believe his eyes.

The body's estimated time of arrival is unknown. A blanket—no, a comforter—of snow weighs it down, untouched and beautiful. Tyler almost wants to leave, almost wants to pull out his phone and snap a picture. "Sick," Tyler whispers, and drops to his knees. He sinks. The snow swallows him up, wrapping around his thighs. It's so cold it's warm.

Kept tucked behind the drum set, Tyler wonders if this is the owner of the warehouse. Were they too attached to the place they didn't want to leave? Or is this some poor soul also enticed in the warehouse and the copious amount of people saying to avoid it? Tyler closes his eyes and sees himself in their place. He shivers and tightens his grip on his flashlight. The hard plastic groans, and it flickers for a moment. Behind him, the lone light bulb busts and fills the hallway and room with darkness. There's a window above them, the snow piled up to the sill. Will it grow? It will grow.

Tyler moves the flashlight to his left hand. "I didn't kill you," Tyler says, and touches the body, the palm. Cold skin, wet skin, Tyler curls his fingers, and the fingers curl back. "Do you want me to kill you?"

He blinks, and he misses it. He blinks, and he's holding onto a clump of snow. He blinks, and the body is beside him in an upright position, sitting criss-cross applesauce. He blinks, and the body is alive.

"You can't kill me," the body says, the voice chilling Tyler to the bone. "I'm already dead."

"Okay," Tyler says, and aims his flashlight at the body. He's polite and doesn't go for the eyes, like Jenna. Jenna said Tyler wanted this and pulled him into the warehouse, and they screamed, and Tyler killed a girl by smacking and smacking her skull until it broke and her brains cried. The body to Tyler's right has the brightest hair he has ever seen. Like blood, it's like blood at the top and shadows at the sides. Tyler's lips tremble. "Okay," he repeats. "Okay, okay."

"Are you alone?"

The body is a man. The man is familiar, dressed in heavy clothing, a white coat, black scarf, and black jeans with matching boots. He's ready for this weather, ready for being buried under a foot of snow. Pale skin from cold, from underexposure, and red lips and red eyes, dark eyes, snow, snow, snow sticks to his hair, to his eyebrows, his _eyelashes._ Tyler raises his hand and stops. He stops. He wants to touch. He wants to stroke the man's cheek and melt the snow along the faint stubble on his cheeks. Tyler stops, though. He can't do that. The man's staring at him with a glazed-over expression, as if he's looking past Tyler.

"Are you alone?" he asks again. "You're still here. I can hear you breathe."

"I'm still here." Tyler licks his lips. "And I'm alone."

The man touches Tyler. Having a palm to his cheek has never brought Tyler more security than it does now. "Good," the man says, and Tyler watches him, furrowing his brow at the man's hand roaming, fingers twitching, feeling, studying. Tyler looks into the man's eyes, those dark eyes with red edges, and realizes he is blind.

"Are _you_ alone?" Tyler lets fingers drag along his lips and pet and pet and pet.

"I am now."

"I killed them."

"No," he says. "I killed them, and you buried them." He cups Tyler's cheek, then slowly runs those cold fingers down the bridge of Tyler's nose. "I heard them one night, and they were laughing. Their laughs were so loud. I was hungry."

Tyler can't follow. Where is the transition? No flow, Tyler frowns. The man doesn't notice. His hand remains by Tyler's nose. "This is very straight." The man's own bridge is sloped and beautiful, a bunny hop.

"Did you eat them?"

"Parts. They let me. Said they didn't need them anymore. Humans don't taste like chicken. Have you chewed on the skin around your nails?" Tyler nods. "It tastes like nothing, yeah?" Tyler nods. "It didn't sustain me. I can eat anything, and it does nothing."

Tyler tears up. "Because you're dead?"

"Because I'm dead."

Tyler cries. The man feels them. They're hot. "I'm sorry." He removes his hands. They're shaking. Tyler drops the flashlight and takes them.

"Are you real?"

"I'm dead."

"Am I real?"

The man shrugs. "Debatable." His eyes are fixated on Tyler's face. He doesn't even blink.

Tyler smiles, and the man smiles, too—instinctive and pretty. "Come home with me," Tyler says.

It's stupid, and Tyler doesn't regret it. It's stupid, and the man agrees. Nodding, his smile so huge, his eyes so dark and glowing, the man begins to stand. The snow is up to his shins. He struggles to stay upright, high-stepping to take a step, arms outstretched to maintain some balance. Ready and willing, Tyler moves with the man. Snow falls, wet, freezing. Tyler's feet are burning up. This isn't good.

"Do you know the way?" asks Tyler, his jaw set so tight it hurts. "I can—"

The man holds out his hand. "Give me the flashlight."

Tyler does.

They leave the warehouse.

The man leads, his feet dragging, much too tired to lift in order to walk properly. Despite being blind, or at least appearing blind, the man knows every nook and cranny of this place. Fingers drifting along the damp walls, the flashlight beam steady in his grasp, Tyler wonders if he can see faint outlines, shapes, rather than being outright blind. Or maybe he is blind. He might be completely blind.

"Hey," the man says, in the lobby, "I feel a draft. Did you break a window?"

"Door was locked."

Passing back the flashlight, the man and his tired feet drop to the floor and scrape the heels of his hands along the wood and snow and glass. "Wait," Tyler says, but the man's already picking up the glass with bleeding hands. "Wait," Tyler repeats in a hurried tone, as he gets on the floor with the man and moves the shards of glass from his mouth. "Don't eat it. What's your name?"

"Josh."

"You're not supposed to eat glass, Josh."

A streetlamp's unfiltered light shines on Josh's face. Tyler can see the pores in his skin and every speck of color in Josh's eyes. They're foggy. Tiny cracks line his lips. Tyler wants to know if Josh has eaten glass before, or even ingested something equally as dangerous. What did he say? Nothing sustains him. He can eat anything, and it does nothing. Because he's dead.

Tyler's heart breaks. "Hey, Josh," he says, "you don't have to eat glass, okay? I… I-I have some food in my bag that you can eat. You can eat it while I drive home. How does that sound?"

 _Ting-ting-ting_ , the glass slips between Josh's fingers. Small scratches litter the insides of his fingers. They don't bother him. They don't bleed. It's too cold. "Need to fix the window."

"How do you fix the window?"

"Like how I fixed the roof."

Tyler frowns. "How did you fix the roof?"

Josh shakes his head, lowers it. Fingers card through his hair and tug at the roots. "Don't wanna talk about it."

"Well, come on. Do you still want to go home with me?"

Josh nods.

Tyler smiles. He picks up the flashlight and rubs Josh's shoulder. "Come on, then."

"Lemme unlock the door."

In his van, Tyler turns on the heat and listens to Josh's teeth chomp on chocolate chip cookies. Absently, Josh strokes the pouch from the bakery. His fingers catch on stitching and upraised material, and his question makes Tyler laugh, but he dares not laugh. "Is this your name? TJ? Is your name TJ?"

"No, my name's Tyler. I own a bakery with my friend Jenna. There's an ampersand between them."

"T and J…?"

"T and J's, yeah."

"Tyler?"

"Hm?"

"These are really good."

Tyler blushes. "Don't mention it."

*

The futon in the corner of Tyler's basement is never a couch. When he's unable to sleep, he comes here to lie down and listen to music until shitty dubstep rocks him into dreams. Sometimes he sneaks down here when Jenna is spending the night. While the futon isn't as comfortable as his bed, Tyler is safer here, three blankets on top of him, warming him, suffocating him.

Too many pillows stacked along the back and sides, Tyler thinks it'll be a suitable environment for Josh to spend time. Tyler doesn't quite know what he's going to do with Josh and why he thought it was a good idea to bring Josh home with him. Josh was a body beneath snow—a _dead_ body beneath snow, squatting in that warehouse. Is he homeless? Did his parents kick him out and tell him to not come back? Josh sits on Tyler's futon and eases his feet from his boots. Fuzzy socks wrap around his feet, drenched with melted snow. Tyler winces at Josh's wince. "Hurts," he whispers, and Tyler disappears upstairs.

He returns with two heating pads. Josh's head turns to watch Tyler plug them in. His eyes aren't that foggy now. Does Josh need to melt? That's comical.

"Here," Tyler says, and stretches a heating pad along the black cushions. "Press your back to this. I'll stick the other one by your neck. Too dangerous to have it by your legs. Take off your socks." Tyler pauses. "You know what? Take off your clothes. I'll get you warmer ones. Dry ones. I'm sorry."

"No, it's fine." Josh watches Tyler leave and watches Tyler stand in front of him, blinking, smiling. "Black is always good."

Not completely blind. Right. Tyler sets the clothes in Josh's lap. Plaid pajamas bottoms and a sweatshirt, Josh should be warm in them. "I'll change, too. Be back in a minute."

Josh is on the heating pads and keeping to himself under a blanket by Tyler's reappearance. He's dressed in much the same as Josh, albeit older and there's Mickey Mouse on his sweatshirt. Tyler stands next to Josh again. He watches him. "You're going to swelter under there."

"I deserve it." Josh's voice is barely above a whisper. "I'm dead. I'm burning in Hell."

Tyler perches on the edge of the futon. He pulls his legs beneath him. "If you're in Hell right now, then am I with you? Am I dead, too?"

Josh rubs his eyes. "Does the heat bother you?"

"Does it bother you?"

"No. I'm dead."

They're together, Tyler wiggling his way beneath the blanket and Josh making room for him. The heating pads are set to low, definitely not what Tyler was expecting. He enjoys it all the same. A heat that he hasn't felt in a very long time in his gut, Tyler welcomes Josh's mouth on his. This isn't over before it starts. This is slow. This is measured. Tyler appreciates every moment. He's opening his mouth, and Josh is coming inside, tasting him, nibbling on his lips, drawing blood, moaning, soft, everything is soft. Even with the presence of blood and teeth, Josh is gentle. Every move is hesitant, like he's unsure, like he's asking permission, and Tyler answers nonverbally—a slow nod of his head or twitching fingers against the exposed skin of Josh's hip.

Tyler kissed strangers before at parties, on dares. Jenna dared him once, and Tyler ended up getting the guy's number and a good fuck out of it, but Jenna doesn't know that part. She doesn't know. She thinks Tyler is with her, friends, maybe more than friends. The first thing Tyler did when his feet touched ground was kiss her cheek. He felt obligated to do this because she was nice to him. She bought the plane ticket. He didn't want her to do that, didn't even suggest he wanted to fly to her, but Jenna bought the plane ticket, so he had to go.

And now? Jenna can't know about Josh. "How did you two meet?" she'll ask, her pretty unpainted nails dropping sprinkles onto a sugar cookie.

Tyler will tell her, "The warehouse," and she'll laugh and call him crazy. "I thought I told you—"

"Tyler?"

"Hm, what?"

"Name's Tyler, right? Said your name, and you didn't react."

"Thinking."

Josh kisses him again. It's peaceful and warm. They sleep under the blankets and share the heat that Josh claims is the depths of Hell.

*

On Sundays, mind mashed and stretched and filled and drained, Tyler doesn't move from his bed. He neglects food and hygiene. Monday morning, he's in the routine again, and he feels moderately better.

This Sunday is no different. Tyler wakes and immediately shuts his eyes. It doesn't matter that Josh is next to him, curled up like a fetus; Tyler is sick, tired, and he feels bad—bad enough to puke, to cry, to die, if it came down to it. But it doesn't. Because on Sundays, Tyler has no energy to do anything at all. Josh doesn't mind the languish tone of the day. No, he encourages it, scooting close to Tyler and peppering dry kisses down the column of his neck. Tyler wraps his arm around Josh's torso. They're close, getting closer. Tyler fiddles with the dials of the heating pads, flicking them on, to low. He shut them off before drifting to sleep, not wanting to cause a fire. Josh didn't protest. He doesn't protest now. He's kissing Tyler's neck, sucking Tyler's neck, biting Tyler's neck. It's wet in seconds, even wetter in minutes. Tyler doesn't like it. Weakly, he pushes Josh away and tells him to stop.

"Wanna sleep."

Josh's eyes are cloudy. "I'm sorry."

Tucked beneath his chin, Josh uses Tyler's chest as a pillow and sleeps with Tyler. Not long after this exchange are they snoring in unison and grasping hands as they carry the other through darkness and snow.

*

Early Monday morning, Tyler wakes to minor burns on the small of his back. Josh racked up Tyler's sweatshirt and stuck cold, cold hands to sweaty skin and clung as their trip slowed to an end. Tyler doesn't know why sleeping the day away makes him feel better. Exhaustion peaks as early as Tuesday afternoon. How he's able to put on a smile for their customers is a mystery.

Along with the mild burn, Tyler's neck is sore. At first, he thinks he slept on it wrong. By the time he untangles himself from Josh and removes the heating pads from the wall outlets, the smell of blood is heavy in Tyler's nostrils, and he knows he doesn't need to look at himself in the mirror to see the damage Josh did yesterday. The bites weren't playful. They were malicious, _hungry_. Josh was in the beginning stages of eating him.

Before popping into the shower, Tyler pulls a box of Waffle Crisp from the pantry and drops it in Josh's lap. Josh is on the futon, touching his feet. Blood is on his lips, his already red lips, and he's rocking. Not for the first time, Tyler wonders if there's something wrong with him because he shouldn't be finding this lone action adorable.

"Hey-o," Tyler says, "eat this. It's good."

Josh fumbles with the box top. He scoops out a handful and tosses it into his mouth. A few pieces fly, but it's okay. Tyler needs to clean anyway.

"I'm going to shower. Won't be too long."

No answer—Josh is eating cereal and smiling to himself.

In the bathroom, Tyler lathers shampoo into his hair and scrubs the blood and dead skin from his neck. It hurts. It hurts so much. Tyler cries under the spray of water and scrubs and scrubs until the water runs with brighter blood than it did minutes prior. He knows he should stop, and he does. He stops.

He stops.

The reflection staring at him is ungodly. Gaunt eyes, bitten lips, skin pink, even below the towel around his waist, Tyler doesn't know what he's going to tell Jenna. If she asks—no, _when_ she asks, Tyler needs to be ready. The bite at his neck requires an explanation. He can't pass it off as a hickey. Too big, too violent, Jenna will joke and ask if he's been necking with a vampire. She'll drop the subject then, but she'll ask later. Maybe as they're driving home, maybe as they're passing the warehouse, a light bulb will go off in that pretty head of hers, and she'll turn to Tyler and go, "I know it wasn't a vampire, so… who?"

What could Tyler say? What would even remotely be okay to say?

He debates on wearing a scarf. He remembers he works in a bakery, and it's nearly impossible to work in layers.

He debates on not coming in today. He remembers Jenna lives across the street, and she'll run over if she sees his van still in the driveway.

So, where does that leave him?

It leaves Tyler opening his medicine cabinet and pulling out a first-aid kit, full with ointment and gauze and whatever else his mother gave him when he moved in. "Burn cream?" he gaped, eyes narrowed. "Why would I need burn cream?"

"Bakery, dear," his mother cooed, and he said, "Oh," and dropped the cream onto a shelf.

Tyler doctors his neck the best he can, all the while deciding he'll tell Jenna it's an Icy Hot patch. "I slept on it wrong," he'll say, and Jenna will, hopefully, not ask any more questions. She knows he sleeps the whole day on Sunday, so Tyler acquiring a sore muscle isn't that much of a stretch.

"Hey-o," Josh says, from the doorway, trying to match Tyler's morning attitude. He's more somber, all his weight leaning on the doorjamb. "Can I take a shower, too?"

"Dead people need to shower?"

"Dead people smell. I need to shower."

Tyler blinks. "I can't argue with that." Josh walks past him, taking off clothes along the way. "I'll grab you some fresh ones," Tyler says, "and set them on the sink. I need to go to work." Josh pulls the curtain and flips on the water. Tyler chews on the inside of his cheek. "Will you be okay by yourself?"

"Yes."

"I'll be back this evening. Not too late."

"Okay."

Tyler frowns. "Josh, are you blind?"

"A little."

Satisfied, Tyler finishes getting ready for work, places a set of pajamas on the sink, and scribbles a note for Josh on the refrigerator. He pins it with a pink magnet, sure to catch Josh's eye if he wanders the house. After double-checking the bandage on his neck is secure, Tyler wraps himself in a scarf and a large winter coat, shoves a beanie on his head, and steps into heavy boots with enough laces for him to get sick of them. He considers yanking the note from the fridge, thinking it insensitive, but he decides to keep it there.

It's snowing outside. Tyler's nose bleeds.

_don't eat glass._

*

Jenna says he looks like he slept well. Jenna smiles and hugs him. Jenna asks about the bandage on his neck.

Tyler says he slept on it wrong. Tyler avoids looking at Jenna. Tyler asks if they had any call-ins yet.

Jenna says yes. Jenna points at a notebook on the counter. Jenna asks if he slept in his bed or down in the basement.

Tyler says the basement. Tyler goes in the back and begins kneading dough. Tyler asks Jenna to please stop staring at him.

Jenna says okay.

Tyler wants to go home.

*

Jenna follows him on the drive home. She texts him as they pass the warehouse. _Hear any news?_ she says, mocking, mocking, mocking. She doesn't care. She doesn't care at all.

At a stop sign, Tyler replies, _don't text and drive_ , and doesn't send another message to her for the rest of the night.

*

At home, Josh is on the couch, in the living room, knees to his chest and eyes on the television. Hand in the box of Waffle Crisp, he doesn't seem to care about Tyler's arrival. "Hi," he mumbles, but stays stationary—no jumping up, no embracing, nothing. Josh says, "Hi," and returns to eating and watching TV. Josh says, "Hi," and keeps to the couch. Josh says, "Hi," and Tyler says, "Hi," too. Tyler says, "Hi," and Josh smiles, and Tyler smiles. Tyler says, "Hi," and he goes up to his room to change clothes.

He smells like dough and chocolate, and when he shakes out his hair, sprinkles dance onto the carpet. Downstairs, Josh is flipping through channels. Downstairs, Tyler joins him on the sofa. Now dressed in a pair of shorts and a long-sleeve shirt, Tyler presses into Josh's side. Even now, Josh doesn't refocus his attention. It's like they've been together for years. They have no need to show affection; it's already known. Their affection comes in being close, wiggling toes against thighs, allowing a hand to rest on those wiggling toes and squeezing them gently. But that doesn't mean their affection ends there. During a commercial break, Josh moves the cereal box to the floor and completely immerses himself in Tyler.

Lips to lips, hands in hair, legs wrapped around hips, Tyler gives himself to Josh. It's the best feeling in the world to have Josh's mouth work along his, Josh's fingers scratching at his scalp, his thighs staking Josh's waist for his own. Despite being the epitome of the cold, Josh is warm, and gets warmer once Tyler begins to work off his clothes. What Tyler wants to do might be a bad idea, might be one the worst things he could possibly get himself into, but Josh's tongue is working a proper hickey onto the other side of his neck, and all spoken word from Tyler's throat is grumbled and nonsensical.

"Do you…?" Josh starts, suddenly nervous.

Tyler nods. "Mm, we can go to my room."

Josh's back along the pillows, his head tilting to expose pale skin with blue veins underneath, Tyler fucks himself on Josh's cock. Neither of them last very long, not once bare skin slides against bare skin.

Josh doesn't need heating pads to fall asleep tonight. "Already in Hell," he says, after Tyler asks if he wants them. "Already dug my grave."

"What if I told you the heat did bother me?" Tyler isn't warm. He's shivering, actually, tugging on three blankets to conserve his body heat. Josh is beside him, welcoming of the heat, the cold, of everything because he's _dead_. He keeps saying he's dead. He's dead, Tyler, he's dead, I thought I told you—

"It's okay," Josh says. "Some people can't stand the heat."

"I work in a bakery," Tyler says.

"What?"

Tyler shakes his head. He falls asleep with Josh's heartbeat next to his ear.

*

Tyler wakes early on Tuesday with a bad idea.

"Come to work with me," he tells Josh, prodding his flank with two fingers. "You can totally help."

Josh agrees. On the ride there, bundled up in his big coat and black scarf, Josh mumbles, "I didn't eat glass yesterday, FYI." And Tyler laughs, and Josh laughs, and they both stare at the warehouse when they pass it. Neither says a word. Both wants to say something. But neither says a word.

Jenna comes in twenty minutes later. She's tying on her apron and meeting Tyler in the back room. "Saw some kids as I drove here, heading this way. I think they might want donuts." Josh has on an apron, too, standing on Tyler's right while Tyler eases donuts from the oven. Tyler is one step ahead. Josh is close behind.

"Who's this?" Jenna smiles. She's friendly, all white teeth and open eyes.

Tyler doesn't answer. Josh does. He holds out his hand, and Jenna takes it to shake. "Josh Dun," he says, and Tyler files that for later. "Are you Jenna?"

Jenna actually pats down her hair and swipes her tongue over her teeth. "Yeah, I'm Jenna. Has Tyler mentioned me? Talked about me?" She's already blushing. Josh crushes it.

"Oh, yeah, said how he owned a bakery with his friend Jenna, so I assumed."

"Right, right." Customers walk in, the bell above the door ringing, and Jenna goes to greet them.

Josh plucks a donut hole from the pile steadily growing and pops it into his mouth. "These are great."

On break, they all sit on the floor behind the front counter, nibbling on breakfast items that hadn't been sold. Tyler chews on a bagel and doesn't miss the way Josh doesn't touch anything. "Aren't you hungry?" Jenna splits her sandwich with him, but Josh shakes his head and whispers how he isn't hungry. Tyler almost jokes about how Josh would be up to eating glass, though now isn't the time, and nor is it ever the time. Tyler wonders if Josh suffers from pica.

"Tyler," Jenna teases, "that hickey on your neck didn't fly under my radar."

They're in the back, packaging the call-in orders. Josh is out front, chatting to a group of teenagers who thought his hair was "bitchin'".

"Shut up," Tyler says.

Jenna giggles. "Was it Josh? I bet it was Josh. I bet you didn't sleep on your neck wrong either. I bet there's another hickey under that bandage. Maybe you should tell Josh to calm down."

Tyler frowns.

She drops sprinkle after sprinkle onto the frosting of a sugar cookie. "How did you two meet?"

Tyler does not tell her the warehouse. He tells her they met on the street. He tells her Josh was a stranger who slipped on some ice and banged his head. He tells her Josh had a concussion and needed to be looked after. He tells her this before he hears what Josh is telling the teenagers in the room over. A concussion would cover this, wouldn't it? Mild brain trauma, yeah, yes, a concussion would cover this.

"Nothing really changes after you die," Josh says, leaning on his elbows, as he tells his tale. "You just continue on with living, except you're… lighter."

"That was your soul, right?" A boy screws up his face and makes the ring through his septum slide. "Must have been your soul."

"No, not your soul. It's your organs. When you die, they take your organs because you don't really have a need for them anymore. Liver, kidneys, lungs, even your heart. They take your heart first, so they can give it to some poor guy on some waiting list. They gave my heart to my brother," Josh says, "or, at least, that's what my parents told me. He didn't make it."

"No way," a chorus of five exclaim.

Tyler ushers them out. "Buy something or leave."

"Donut holes!" they say, and Tyler gives some to them. Josh watches this exchange with tired eyes. He looks bored, almost, no matter the fog still lingering in those dark swamps.

"Are we going on deliveries now?"

"Stop telling people you're dead," Tyler hisses, knowing Josh for three days and already deciding what's best for him.

"But I am dead."

"No, you're not. Stop that."

"Stop what?" Jenna emerges with pouches in her arms. "Tyler, I'm going to load these into your van, okay?"

"Okay, Jenna." Once the bell chimes at her departure, Tyler turns back to Josh. "You're not dead. You still have your heart. I heard it last night."

Josh frowns.

Tyler loops his scarf around his neck and shrugs on his coat. "Come on."

Without a sound, Josh follows.

*

Tyler returns to the couple's house with more bagels. This time, Josh is with him, quiet, so quiet. He hasn't said a word since the bakery. Is this the silent treatment? Does Josh think if he's quiet then he can prove he's a ghost, Tyler's shadow, haunting him at every turn?

The husband invites Tyler in and extends it to Josh. "Who's this?" he asks, the wife sat in her chair and pouting at the news.

"Josh Dun," Tyler says after realizing Josh is, indeed, giving the silent treatment.

"New employee? Showing him the ropes?"

"No, just my boyfriend, along for the ride."

The husband claps, Josh's eyes widen, and the wife wags her finger. "Why does your name sound familiar?"

Josh talks now. "I don't know."

They don't stay for long.

"I'll figure it out," the wife sighs. "Next time you two come in, I'll have it figured out."

Back in Tyler's van, Josh sitting as still as a statue, Tyler asks, "Is there a reason for her to know your name?"

"No," Josh says, and leaves it at that.

As they pass the warehouse, Josh's eyes linger. "How did it feel to kill them?"

Tyler can feel the bounce of the van as vividly as if it happened seconds before. "Didn't feel anything at first. I think that was the shock, though. Scary. Sad."

"Sad, why? Because they died?"

"Because of what could happen to me."

"You should do it again."

"What?"

"Kill," Josh says, and raises his hand to point at a man on the sidewalk. "It gets easier. Kill him now."

Tyler does. He turns the steering wheel and swerves off the road, and his van bounces as it crushes the man's spine and squeezes out his innards like a tube of toothpaste. The heavy coat does nothing for protection.

"You're a good person, Tyler," Josh says, and Tyler believes him.

*

Tyler works himself on Josh's cock tonight, too. Josh falls asleep right after. Tyler stretches on his stomach and searches Josh's name on Google. Nothing of importance pops up, so his investigation takes him to Facebook. He finds a status a woman made last year, around Halloween. Her son, a Josh Dun, went missing, and she wanted help in finding him. She included his picture and his information—height, weight, hair color, eye color, what he was last seen wearing. The picture is undeniably Josh, albeit with hair of a more natural hue. His skin is tan, much different from the sickly pale he has now, and he's smiling with squinty eyes and throwing up double peace signs.

Scrolling through the comments leaves Tyler more confused. He reaches the conclusion the search for Josh was called off, that he was presumed dead, that he went missing a few days after his little brother's funeral. _Heart failure_ , Tyler read. _It broke Josh_. Ultimately, Tyler realizes this is only one side of the story, and he shouldn't form any biases just yet. He needs Josh to tell him what happened—the asshole. "They gave my heart to my brother," he said. "It gets easier," he said. "Kill him now," he said.

Tyler anticipates nightmares. His dreams are peaceful.

*

"Said it was impossible for them to find who hit the poor man last night," a young mom says, her toddler on her hip. "Too much snow. When do you think it's going to stop snowing?"

Tyler pouts with her. "Soon, I hope."

"It won't," Josh says, and the toddler screams.

*

If anything, the snow gets worse. Jenna tells Tyler if the power goes out, she's going to run over to Tyler's. Tyler tells her he's going to be knocking on his parents' door, but that doesn't change Jenna's mind. "Oh, your parents love me! They won't mind."

Tyler hopes the power doesn't go out.

*

"Is he dead?" the wife asks, spilling bagel crumbs onto the carpet bit by bit. "I swear I remember reading about a Josh Dun dying."

"No," Tyler urges, and doesn't accept the invitation inside. "Have a good day."

*

For a week, for two weeks, for three weeks, always on their way home from their deliveries, Josh gestures to a person in the distance. "Them. Her. Him. Do it. Do it."

And Tyler does. He imagines the bumps like a roller coaster ride. Sometimes Josh tells Tyler to park, and they walk over and inspect the body, stand over it as they struggle to prolong their last breath. One time, Josh is impatient and grinds his shoe into their face. Another time, Tyler does it.

If Tyler doesn't run over someone on his way home, he gets anxious and picks at his fingernails for the rest of the night. He does this a lot. After the third hit and run, people have started to avoid the road in front of the warehouse. "It's haunted," Tyler hears a man tell Jenna at the bakery. "The ghost inside is upset."

"I thought all was quiet on the warehouse front," she mentions in passing to Tyler, to which Tyler shrugs and says, "I'unno."

Tyler's nightmares are nonexistent. His dreams are confusing, yet they are not frightening. Josh is a common theme, smelling of death, looking of death— _real_ death, not how he looks now, actual decaying skin and missing hair and eyes so cloudy they look like cataracts. Always in these dreams, Josh is eating on something not edible. The first night, it's glass; the second, ceramic; the third, bones.

"Kill people now," Josh says, and uses human hair as floss.

Every day is Sunday to Tyler. Josh coaxes him from the bed, rubbing his neck and telling him everything is going to be okay. Tyler is starting to think he froze to death in the warehouse. He doesn't feel alive.

*

The power goes out. Tyler waits for Jenna to run across the street. She doesn't.

Josh stuffs blankets under his arms, Tyler's comforter slung across his shoulders like a cape. "Come on," he says, and Tyler makes sure the front door is locked before going down to the basement.

They cuddle on the futon and try to sleep. Josh's heart races. "Tyler," Josh says, and Tyler hums, and Josh snores.

*

The power doesn't turn on in the morning, or the day after that. Tyler shivers and forces himself to run around the house, hoping to get his body temperature to rise. He plugs in an old landline and calls his parents. They don't answer.

"Hey," Josh says, nighttime outside and the snow never ceasing. "Let's go explore."

Tyler doesn't know why he agrees. He's pulling on layers, more layers than needed. There's a blizzard, and his nose bleeds, and his nose bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. He lets it flow.

With a roar that could wake the entire neighborhood, Tyler's van starts and carries them to the warehouse. He drives one-handed, the other holding a wad of glove-compartment napkins to his nose, pinching it, suffocating himself, breathing through his mouth. It sounds wrong. Josh hums from the passenger seat, his arms around Tyler's backpack in his lap. A blanket, a flashlight, a knife with a dull blade, and a portable phone charger that is most certainly dead, Tyler has packed a bag like this before. On the night he met Josh, he went prepared for the unexpected. And he found a man who claimed he was dead, who claimed he gave his heart to his brother who ended up rejecting the transplant anyway. Tyler falls asleep to Josh's heart every night while his own slows to a near stop. Never before in his life has Tyler felt deader.

It's dangerous to drive at night, and even more dangerous to drive in the snow. Tyler can't see the road, can't think about the road. He's swerving, and Josh is humming, he's humming and humming, and Tyler begins to cry. "You're almost there," Josh says then, and Tyler nods and whispers a "thank you".

The warehouse looms in the distance.

And his van rolls to a stop in front of the warehouse. And there are no lights on in the warehouse. And Tyler cries. And Josh hums. And Tyler digs out the flashlight from his bag, stuffs the used napkins into a cup holder, slings his bag over his shoulder, and gets out of the van and walks.

He walks and walks, has to high step, because the snow comes to his knees. It isn't real. It doesn't feel real. Tyler doesn't feel real. "Am I real?" he asks Josh again, a look over his shoulder, as the flashlight bulb flickers.

"Debatable," Josh says again, and Tyler deems it acceptable again.

The window is fixed. Tyler breaks it again. He climbs through it again, and Josh follows him, and Tyler goes upstairs again, listens to the stairs remain silent again, feels the snow from the holes in the ceiling wet his face again, he feels sick again. Tyler is going to be sick.

"In here," Josh says, and pulls Tyler into a small room, an office, what used to be an office. "Up here." A desk is overturned, so they fix it, and Tyler sits on it, like Josh said, Josh standing in front of him, Josh coming closer, Josh kissing him, Josh loving him, Josh biting holes into his neck and smearing blood all over and all over.

Stop, Tyler knows he should say, but he wraps his legs around Josh's waist and pulls him in and pleads for more, more, _more._ Josh fucks him, and it hurts, and Tyler screams and cries, and blood drips, drips onto the desk, onto the floor, and Tyler shouts Josh's name and tells him to keep going, keep going.

Tyler is hot and sticky beneath his layers. The flashlight is dead. Josh's eyes are cloudy and calculating. "Follow me."

They leave the office and go down a hallway. Too narrow to stretch out an arm, claustrophobia is common. Tyler touches his neck, dry with blood. "Josh," he says, but Josh hums in return. They're going down a hallway, the same hallway leading to the old drum set. More snow is in the room, stacked nearly to the ceiling now and concealing the window. Tyler wants to dig a hole, wants to preserve his body and be woken up when he feels better. It'll be like a rebirth. Maybe that's what Josh was doing in here. He's dead in a metaphorical sense. Tyler unearthed him. Who will unearth Tyler?

"You found me here," Josh says, voice low. Not quite a whisper, Josh says, "I died, and this was my grave." Josh says, "I'm dead, and you woke the dead."

"You're not dead," Tyler says, and Josh snorts and says, "Okay."

Josh drops to his knees. Tyler does, too. The snow swallows them. Josh takes Tyler's hand and squeezes. "This place is nothing to me. It was my tomb. It was where I could hide. It was where I could lie down and forget everything."

Josh says, "It was where you found me."

Josh says, "Lie here with me."

Compact and hard, the snow is a coffin. Made of makeshift wood, Tyler is comfortable. It's the most comfortable he's ever been. He smells vanilla, sugar cookies warm from the oven. With his neck stiff with blood, he fights to keep staring at Josh. He turns his head and irritates the bite marks. Blood runs. Blood stains. Tyler's vision is blurry.

"Die," Josh tells him. "Please."

And so, he dies.

*

 _Stay away from the warehouse, Tyler_ , she texts.

"I thought I told you—" she says.

"Tyler, please," she says, on her knees and touching his face. "I thought I told you, I thought I told you—"

He doesn't listen.

Of course he doesn't listen.

Why didn't he listen?

*

He comes to in a hospital bed, too weak to move his arms, too weak to open his eyes fully. He squints, and it hurts. He breathes, and it hurts. Everything hurts.

"Where's Josh?"

Jenna is here, face pale from crying. "Josh? Who's Josh?"

It hurts to think. "M-my boyfriend… or whatever."

Jenna laughs. "Why would you have a boyfriend, Tyler?"

It hurts to think. It hurts to think, so he doesn't. It hurts to think, so he goes back into the darkness.

*

The doctors say he's lucky to be alive. They say it's fortunate Jenna found him when she did or else he would have frozen to death in the warehouse.

He doesn't feel alive. He doesn't feel real.

*

Jenna says something told her to look out her window before she got into bed Saturday night. His van wasn't in the driveway, and she got in her car and drove to the only place that made sense: the warehouse.

Jenna says she had to crawl through a broken window. Jenna says she found him lying in a pile of snow, clutching a dismembered arm. "Wasn't connected to a body," she says. "The police say it belonged to the second girl… you know… you know what I'm talking about, Ty."

Jenna says she was scared she was too late. She says his skin was blue, so blue.

"You looked dead."

Tyler is in the spare bedroom at his parents' house. He holds onto the edge of a blanket and does not stare at Jenna. "I am dead," he admits. "Jenna, I must be dead. I killed so many people. This is punishment. I'm dead, and I'm still here."

"Tyler—" She sits beside him, hugs him. "Tyler, you're not dead."

He shuts his eyes. "Where's Josh?"

She doesn't answer. She's tired of telling Tyler the same thing—"I don't know who you're talking about, Tyler. You say you've known Josh for weeks, for months—that I've met him—but it's been barely a week since the second girl turned up. Tyler, you say you've killed so many people, you say it like you did it on purpose, but you haven't, Tyler. I don't know why you keep insisting on these things. You're okay, Tyler. What happened wasn't real. You had hypothermia. You're safe now."

She kisses him. "You're safe now, Tyler."

His lips are broken and used, and he is dead.

*

The same birthday Jenna gifted him a moleskine journal, she also tricked him into decorating his own birthday cake.

"Want it done by Friday. They couldn't make up their mind," Jenna said, "so they told me to do whatever I wanted."

"And what do you want?"

"Whatever you want." She smiled. "You're decorating it, Tyler."

Tyler knows black icing stains teeth and everything it touches, but he uses it anyway; he isn't the poor guy who's going to eat it. He trims the edge with blue, makes a moon in the style of Van Gogh in the middle with white and yellow, and spells out "Happy Birthday Tyler!" in pink without knowing the Tyler receiving this cake would be him. His parents had a party for him the previous weekend, invited the family over, and ate until their stomachs hurt and played _Mario Kart_ until their eyes burned. Jenna was there, too, hence why Tyler thought nothing of the cake in front of him. On his actual birthday, his mom texted him, told him to call later, and he did, he did, and the lights in the warehouse said hello, and he wrecked his car.

He came back to the bakery to drop off empty boxes and other trash, and Jenna was still there. She sat at the counter, long legs swinging as she sang Tyler "Happy Birthday to You", the cake he decorated next to her. Both he and his teeth wanted to die from how sweet the black icing would taste.

After returning to work, Tyler doesn't feel comfortable baking, at least not yet. Jenna assures him it was okay, and makes sure he only decorated the pastries. He has a lot to do, especially since Jenna is good at persuading customers with her smile to get icing on their sweets when they normally wouldn't.

They don't do call-ins right away. "You need to take it easy," she tells Tyler, and forces him on more breaks and more leisurely chores around the bakery, mainly sweeping. If Tyler isn't squeezing the colors of the rainbow on cupcakes, then he has a broom in his hand and doing his best not to tip over from exhaustion. He's lost track of the days. Hearing that nearly no time has passed set Tyler back a lot. He almost went into the shop on Sunday, thinking it was a Wednesday. Jenna saw him from her window and ran out to stop him, to ask where he was going, and he told her, "To work, obviously," and she took him into her house and sat with him and pet his hair. "It's Sunday, sweetheart," she said. "We're not open on Sundays. You don't usually leave the bed on Sundays."

Tyler felt patronized. He didn't talk to Jenna for the rest of the day.

Today, though, today he's sure it's Wednesday. Jenna installed a tear-away calendar on the display counter shortly after that incident. It says it's Wednesday. It says it's February. More customers are asking for foods colored pink, foods with heart sprinkles, and foods that look as lovely as they taste. A girl came in that morning to order cupcakes for her girlfriend. Jenna squealed and penciled it down. "How long have you two been dating?"

"Five years!"

Jenna squealed again. Tyler checked to see if they had enough pink food coloring. They did.

When he finished, Jenna made him taste test one on his break. "Take it easy," she reminded him, then handed him the broom at the end of the twenty minutes. "Take it easy, take it easy."

Tyler pushes around the same pile of dust, head bent low, wanting to be ignored and disappear. It's gotten worse. Every breath he takes rattles his lungs, and every time he wakes up, he wishes he hadn't. He supposes this is payback for telling Josh he wasn't truly dead, no matter if all of that wasn't real. Maybe that was a trial run. Maybe that was God seeing if he's able to detect depression in his friends, if he can help them—but wasn't he helping Josh? Josh wasn't dead. He could hear his heart. He could hear Josh's heart.

Furious, Tyler wipes tears from his eyes and continues to slide the dust in a circle. Jenna doesn't disturb him. She's talking to a customer. "I can make you some fresh ones," she tells him. "It'll take a little longer, though."

"I don't care," he says, and laughs. "It's been forever since I came in here. I walk past it every day. Thought today I should pop in and say hi."

"And order some donut holes."

"Dude, I've been craving those. No idea why."

The voice is familiar. Must be a repeat customer. That's why. Tyler leans against his broom, a hand at the top, his cheek to his hand.

"You can wait here while they finish up. What's your name?"

"Josh," he says. "Josh Dun."

Tyler opens his eyes.

Jenna laughs, and Josh laughs with her. "Josh, huh?"

"Yeah. Something wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong. I'll tell you when they finish, Josh."

Tyler drops to his knees, groping for the dustpan and scraping everything inside. No, no, no, no—"No, no, no," he whispers to himself, dumping the debris in the trash bin. He feels sick. He's going to be sick.

He chances it. He raises his head and glances over at the small seating arrangement in the corner. Draped with blue-and-white-checkered tablecloths, Tyler told Jenna they needed some seating. She didn't understand, but let Tyler pick out the chairs, tables, and decorations to sit on the tables anyway. Right now, it's paper hearts, fanned out and old, something Tyler made his mom as a kid. Josh, or who claims he is Josh, plays with one as he sits. Soft features, clean face, bright red hair, Tyler knows he must be dead. He knows this isn't real. He doesn't know what's going on.

So, he wraps both hands around the broom's handle and whacks Josh across the shoulders with it.

"Shit!" Josh says, as someone should when they are whacked with a broom. He rubs his right shoulder, the one that got most of the impact, and stares at Tyler. He's not angry, just confused. "What was that for?"

Thankfully there is no one else in the bakery. Jenna was in the back, but she's walking toward them now, outrage, outraged. She's angry. She's so angry. "Tyler! What are you doing?!"

"Josh," Tyler explains, the broom slack in his grip. It falls to the floor. "That's Josh."

"Josh? Who—oh, Tyler. I thought I told you—" She shakes her head and presses both hands to Tyler's chest, pushing him, shoving him. "Sorry about him. Only got released from the hospital not too long ago. Hypothermia. Said he met a guy who apparently looks like you and has your name, and you two were da—"

"Jenna!"

"Tyler, it's ridiculous. It wasn't real. None of it was real. I told you not to go in that warehouse, and now look what's wrong with you. You think you're dead. You think Josh here knows you. You think _you're dead_ , Tyler. Who even thinks like that?!" She sighs and shakes her head again and again. "Sorry," she says. "Tyler, get his order. Just have to box it."

Tyler does. He's shaking so badly he messes up a few times, but he manages. The box is loaded down with fresh donut holes. They smell like home, like everything will be okay in the end.

Josh takes the box when Tyler passes it to him. "Thanks," he says.

Jenna says, "You're welcome." Jenna says, "Have a nice day."

Josh says, "You, too," but he's looking at Tyler as he says it, and Tyler tells himself not to look at Josh, but he looks at Josh. Josh has healthy skin and red hair in loose curls, black at the sides. There's no snow in his eyebrows or even his eyelashes. Josh looks warm, bundled up in a white winter coat and heavy black boots. Josh smiles, and his eyes crinkle at the edges. Josh's eyes are so clear. Josh's eyes are brown and clear, and they make Tyler want to be alive. He looks away, and Josh's gaze lingers, and he leaves, and Jenna tells Tyler to get a hold of himself.

"That was embarrassing," she says.

"How can you live with yourself?" she says.

"You know what? Don't come into work tomorrow," she says.

"I won't," he says.

"Good," she says, and goes in the back.

Tyler picks up his broom and wishes he knew how to be alive.

*

"Tyler," Jenna says, flipping over the sign on the door to read "Sorry! We're Closed!", "you know I care about you, and I only want what's best for you."

"Yeah."

"You need to go home. Take a breather. Relax. Okay? Work on getting better."

"Yeah."

Tyler leaves first. He exits through the back and struggles to stick his key into his van. It hasn't snowed in days. Tyler remembers the young mother and her screaming toddler, wanting nothing more than the snow to end. And then, Tyler remembers the young mother and her screaming toddler aren't real because Josh was with him when he met her. Tyler goes around his van, toward the dumpsters, and stands on his tiptoes to ensure his vomit lands inside. He thinks if the lid were to come crashing down, it would break his neck. What a sad way to go.

"Hey," Tyler hears behind him. Timid, full of anxiety, "Are you okay?"

Trash from a bakery is like any other trash. It plugs up Tyler's nostrils. He steps back, lets the lid come crashing down. It bounces twice. The sound is booming.

"Are you okay?" the voice asks again. It's familiar. It's so familiar.

Tyler closes his eyes. "I'm fine."

"Oh, okay. That's good." Josh shuffles his feet against the gravel. "This is… I'm going to sound really stupid here, and you totally don't have to answer, but are you okay?"

He asks this for a third time, but this time it's narrower. Tyler knows what Josh means. "No," he says, and turns on his heel, facing Josh. "I'm not okay. At all. I don't know what's wrong with me. Jenna's right. I messed myself up. I'm… I don't know."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"No. Good night." Tyler tries to walk past.

Josh touches his arm. "Wait, uh, I have another question."

"Go ahead."

"She said you, uh, went in that warehouse. I, well, they're going to tear down the warehouse soon, on Sunday, I think. They're giving tours of the place now. Police monitoring the whole thing. Ambulances on standby. Finally found the owner of it, and he's charging, like, ten bucks to look inside. Really hyping up the whole ghost angle, despite, like, paranormal experts saying there's nothing supernatural inside. Just faulty wires and the general old building shit." Josh realizes he's still holding Tyler's arm. He lets go and rubs the back of his neck. "I don't know why I'm asking you this. I don't know if it'll trigger you or anything, if you go back. I just thought, maybe, like… it would help? Other people will be there. You won't be alone. I've never been, so I didn't want to pass up this opportunity. So, um… do you want to go with me? Preferably tonight?"

Tyler is lightheaded. "Yes."

"Really? Even after throwing up?"

"Run me by a coffee shop, and I'll be okay."

Josh smiles. "Sick! That's awesome. I've always wanted to explore on my own, but I never got the chance. My friends told me not to because you know what they say— _don't go in the warehouse_." They're walking together now, going past Tyler's van, heading toward Josh's car. "I thought about going the night that girl was found, but I came down with a cold and couldn't do it. Wasn't that fucked up? Did you read what happened to her?"

"I heard, yeah."

"Damn. And then, the other girl was found, too! Even more fucked up. She was missing an arm. Wonder where it went."

Should Tyler tell Josh? He tells Josh. "I think I was holding onto it when Jenna found me."

"That makes it even more fucked up. Just adds more to the story." Josh opens the car door for Tyler, who gets inside and immediately hugs his knees. Josh gets in on the driver's side and starts the car. First thing he does is turn on the heat. "I couldn't believe it when I first heard it. I thought the girls were dead. They were missing for so long, and then they pop back up all of a sudden? I don't think they were originally in the warehouse. I think they made it their home within the last week or so. Couldn't have possibly stayed in there for that long. Well, _maybe_." Josh shrugs. He turns on the radio next. "Clear signs of hypothermia. Frostbite. They probably decided to eat each other to survive. Who knows what was going on in their heads."

"Yeah," Tyler mumbles.

"So, you want coffee? I'll pay for it, don't worry. Also gonna pay for the entry into the warehouse. I invited you, after all." Josh drums his fingertips against the steering wheel. "I'm sorry if I'm talking too much. I'm actually really nervous."

"It's okay."

"Your name's Tyler, right?"

"Yes."

"Wanted to be sure."

Tyler pulls at a thread on his scarf. "Josh, I killed both of those girls. I ran one over, and then I went into the warehouse with my friend, and she came at us, and she tried to kill me, so I killed her first, and I don't know why I'm telling you this, but it feels good to tell someone."

Josh is quiet. He pulls into the drive thru of a local coffee shop and orders for Tyler. "Not judging you," he says, gently handing over the hot cup. "They were accidents. Self-defense. It's over now. It's okay."

"Nothing feels real," Tyler says. He doesn't want to cry in front of Josh, but he cries in front of Josh. "I don't feel real. I feel like I'm dead. I don't know why I told you to get me this coffee because I deserve to have the taste of acid in my mouth. I deserve to feel like I'm rotting from the inside out. I feel so bad, and I don't know what to do. I can't kill myself because I'm already dead. It hurts. It hurts so much, Josh. I can't even feel my own heart beat anymore." Tyler sips at the coffee and sinks deeper into the seat.

They're in front of the warehouse. A crowd of spectators are around it, pre-provided flashlights from the police lighting the exterior and interior of the building as if it were daytime. Josh moves around in his car, twisting, staring at Tyler. "Give me your wrist."

Tyler does.

Josh pushes Tyler's sleeve up to his elbow and lightly touches the inside of his wrist, the curve of the thin bone. Josh's touches are feathers, a soft pressure. Tyler watches Josh. Josh's expression is not humoring Tyler, not mocking, not anything. He nods to himself and returns Tyler's wrist. "I can feel your heart beat."

Tyler reaches forward with his hand, his forearm still bare, and rests his palm on Josh's chest. "I can feel your heart beat, too."

For a minute, they sit there, looking at each other, listening to the radio hum an old nineties punk song. Josh blinks, and Tyler blinks, too. Simultaneously they speak; simultaneously they blush and excuse themselves. "You go first," Josh says, and Tyler shakes his head and says, "No, I was gonna ask something really dumb."

"Right," Josh mumbles. "Okay, I was gonna say we should probably get out." He chews on his lip. "What were you going to ask?"

"It's dumb."

"I doubt it."

"Was gonna ask if I could kiss you."

Josh doesn't say anything. He only blinks, and Tyler sighs. "I know, I know. It was dumb."

"No! No, it's fine. You're fine. Just took me by surprise." Josh looks down. He turns off the radio. "Do you really want to kiss me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Tyler might say, "Because you're beautiful," or "Because I've kissed you a million times before and want to see if this millionth-and-one kiss is any different," or "Because you make me feel like everything's going to be okay."

But Tyler doesn't say that. He says, "Because I want to," and that's good enough for Josh, for he leans in, springs in the seats sighing, and presses kiss after kiss to Tyler's lips. They're pecks, not anything too deep and demanding. Whether it's due to preventing the taste of vomit in Josh's mouth or because it's their first kiss, Tyler can't be sure. He's along for the ride, not thinking, just enjoying the slide of lips, the softest tease of tongue, and Josh's laughter coming in full waves.

"That was good," he says, then adds, " _really_ good." He's nervous again, biting at the inside of his cheek. "What's your last name?"

"Joseph."

"Oh! So, the bakery's name is your initials."

"What? No, it's for me and Jenna. Tyler and Jenna. T and J."

Josh snorts. "Whatever, man. Let's go. Bring that coffee with you. It'll be cold in there."

With as many visitors as it has, the cold is bearable. Close, but not packed together like sardines, Tyler doesn't shiver nor freeze. Josh stands nearby, his hand holding Tyler's, as he controls the flashlight's beam. They begin their adventure in the lobby, giggling at the old pots for plants, the overturned benches, and the random trash mixed in with the debris. Josh swears he found a condom, but Tyler doesn't believe him.

Cops are patrolling the building along with the guests, a hand kept on their guns if something funny were to happen. Everybody's having a good time, though, standing around in rooms and pointing at the many holes in the ceiling. "I bet if we had a blizzard, this entire place would be snowed in," a guy says, his girlfriend rolling her eyes and saying, "It won't snow that much, idiot."

A small group is in the room at the end of the narrow hallway. The drum set is still there, and Josh excitedly begins to jump. "Holy shit! I used to have a kit just like this before I moved!"

The small group welcomes Tyler and Josh. They sit on the floor, the snow underneath fluffy and dry. All their flashlights are upright and acting as a makeshift campfire. "Do you have any stories about this place?" a woman with blue hair asks, her arm around her girlfriend. "I used to drive past this building once a week, and sometimes the lights would be on, and sometimes it wouldn't."

"Yeah," Tyler agrees, Josh easing the coffee cup from his hands to take a drink. "Same here. Always the upstairs window. Wasn't just the light, though. Used to see shadows. Used to see the shadows waving, smiling."

"Just shadows?" a teenage boy wonders. "Or did they take a shape?"

"An arm," Tyler says, and after a glance at Josh, he adds, "and sometimes a figure."

"What about glass breaking?" a man butts in. "I heard the building's collapsed before."

The group nods and breaks into chatter. "Heard the police didn't even go in here the half dozen times they said they did," someone remarks, to more nods. "Too scared of it themselves. And it's not even scary! Not when you're surrounded by a bunch of people, mind you."

Josh slings his arm around Tyler's shoulders. "Don't go in the warehouse," he says.

"Don't go in the warehouse," Tyler repeats.

"Don't go in the warehouse."

*

Josh drives Tyler back to the bakery to get his van. "Gimme your phone," he says, "and I'll put in my number, and you can give me yours, and we can hang out sometime."

Tyler has to go through the texts from Jenna. I thought I told you, I thought I told you—

"Are you with her?" Josh furrows his brow. "Sorry. You're obviously not. You wouldn't have kissed me otherwise."

They exchange numbers. "Jenna's my friend. She's… She's nice." Tyler attempts a smile, but it comes out flat. "We can hang out tomorrow. She told me not to come into work. Said I needed to rest."

"Oh, totally, yeah! Just text me your address." Josh waves a small wave. "I'll see you later, Tyler."

"Bye."

*

They are in the basement of Tyler's house, curled into each other on the futon. Hidden under three blankets and sharing a heating pad, Tyler listens to Josh's heartbeat and his voice. "How come I've never seen you around before?"

"Used to live in California. Jenna wanted to start a bakery with me, so she bought me a plane ticket… and here I am."

"Why'd you move to California?"

Tyler shrugs. "Mostly wanted to piss off my parents, but it didn't work. They moved there with me. Then, they moved back when I moved back."

"For what it's worth, I'm glad you're here."

Josh squeezes him, and Tyler feels loved.

*

Josh comes over every day. He and Tyler don't do much, mostly sitting around and watching TV, not that either of them mind. Josh is rubbing Tyler's feet when he brings up the warehouse.

"I remembered right; it is being torn down this Sunday. At two o'clock. Do you want to come with me? We could watch it fall down." He pauses. "That doesn't sound very romantic at all, does it?"

"No," Tyler says, smiling, "but I'll go with you."

Another pause. Josh says, "It's called Cotard delusion… Cotard's syndrome… Walking corpse syndrome… When you think you're already dead."

Tyler curls his toes. "Oh."

"Do you still think you're dead?" Josh isn't laughing. He's concerned. Jenna would be laughing. Jenna would call him ridiculous. And that's why Josh is here, and not Jenna. That's why Tyler hasn't talked to Jenna in days. That's why Tyler is opening up to Josh and not Jenna because Jenna would say what Tyler is going through isn't real.

"I'm getting better." Tyler scoots closer to Josh. "There are times when I feel deader than dead, but… not always. Not always."

"What about now?"

Tyler doesn't even have to think on it. "I feel alive."

Josh leans in and kisses Tyler's cheek.

*

Sundays are Tyler's bad days, but this Sunday, Tyler rolls out of bed. He showers and dresses warmly, and Josh picks him up on their not-so-romantic date. "Hi," he says, and Tyler says, "Hello."

Tyler has stood outside the warehouse before, when the kids who broke a window said they found a dead body. Tyler watched the police walk in, walk out, and tell everybody to go home. The crowd was disappointed, and so was Tyler.

Today, on Sunday, his bad day, Tyler stands with Josh and the crowd of a hundred or so people, barricaded with a single strip of yellow caution tape. Josh holds Tyler's hand and doesn't let go. "Tell me if you need to go."

"I will."

He doesn't need to go. He watches the warehouse fall, brick by brick, the roof coming down first, then each floor, until he hears nothing but the screams of the crowd, the cheers of the crowd, the applause, the laughter. At that, Tyler thinks he might faint, thinks he might begin to cry, but he is still, unmoving, and Josh squeezes his hand, and Tyler feels _alive_.

Josh's mouth against his ear, "Are you okay?"

Josh's fingers scratching his palm, "Do you need to go?"

Tyler shakes his head. "I'm okay."

He shakes his head. "I'm fine right here."

Dust in the air, mixing with the light flurry of snowflakes, the city begins clearing away the rubble. It takes hours, but Tyler can stand for hours, and Josh doesn't leave him alone. This is a date, and it would be rude for the party to break.

"I'm okay," Tyler repeats, hours later, like their conversation never ended. "I'm more than okay."

"I'm okay," he whispers, and Josh has to lean in to listen. "I'm okay," Tyler says. "I'm alive."

Josh drives Tyler home that evening and takes him to bed. The real thing is better. The real thing is tender and playful, and Tyler doesn't remember the last time he's laughed this much. Sex should always be like this—breathless and smiles and erogenous zones stroked and kissed and licked to their breaking point. Sex should always be like this—between consenting partners who are on the top of the world.

It's when they're coming down from their orgasms Josh remembers it's Valentine's Day. "Definitely didn't plan this," he says, and Tyler laughs. He laughs, and Josh laughs, and they fall asleep to the lullaby of their hearts beating as one.

*

In the dead of night, on a Tuesday, Tyler and Josh stand in Tyler's backyard. It's cold, and Josh wants to know why Tyler called him and demanded he come over _right now_.

"Need you here," Tyler said, and he says that again when Josh rubs the crook of his elbow. "I need you here, Josh."

Tyler holds the moleskine journal Jenna gave him between two fingers, barely holding on, watching pages fall from the beaten spine. Tyler's abused this thing, pressed down pen and pencil so all pages were marked by invisible means. _i'm sorry_ were his last words. _i'm sorry, i'm sorry,_ "I'm sorry," he says to Josh, "for dragging you out of bed."

"It's okay." Josh pats his arm. "I understand."

The lighter in Tyler's hands is old, the fluid almost gone. He doesn't expect it to light, but it lights.

Tyler burns the journal, doesn't let go until his hand is threatened to combust.

He drops it in the snow and watches it swallow the moleskine whole. Josh kicks more snow on top of the journal, burying it, out of sight, out of mind.

Tyler is lighter than air. "I think I burned myself."

They go inside. Josh finds burn cream in Tyler's medicine cabinet. He smirks at it, says, "Never even thought about getting some burn cream for my first-aid kit."

*

Tyler returns to work. The dynamic between Jenna and him has shifted, but it isn't awkward. They're doing their best to not make it awkward.

She's surprised to hear Tyler and Josh are dating. "I thought—" she starts, and stops. "It's nothing. I'm glad you're happy."

"I am happy," Tyler says, mixing food coloring.

He drives by the ruin of the warehouse on his way to and from work. The road isn't scary now. There are flowers growing in the vacant lot—pretty daisies. When Tyler smiles this time, he knows the flowers smile with him. Their shadows dance in the sunlight. It's a welcoming sight. Tyler doesn't feel alone.

On the first day of spring, Josh picks him up, and they drive around the neighborhood with the windows down. It's peaceful. Tyler shuts his eyes and appreciates the heat on his face. Josh laughs at him, calls him cute, and Tyler waves him away. "Shut up," he says, smiling. "I'm tired of the snow."

**Author's Note:**

> [andy nícole](http://r3pr0gr4mm3d.tumblr.com/) and their brother were inspired by this fic and incorporated some elements into their [halloween](http://edyluewho.tumblr.com/post/152478331849) [costumes](http://edyluewho.tumblr.com/post/152604560749)! they both look amazing!!!
> 
> for my photography final, i made collages based off _blurryface_ , and i would be lying if i said i wasn't influenced by my fic with my [collage](http://edyluewho.tumblr.com/post/160815168284) for "fairly local"
> 
> [holvegsantu](http://instagram.com/holvegsantu) knows how to make beautiful, haunting [artwork](https://instagram.com/p/BXGI7pVFaPe/) <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Why he Rots](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214211) by [parkerisdead](https://archiveofourown.org/users/parkerisdead/pseuds/parkerisdead)




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